Once, as a boy, I fell from a tree at the Barbaccia villa and had lain unconscious for an hour until Marco had found me. He looked just the same now, not a day older which was surprising. The same expression, a mixture of anger and dismay and love. Strange after all those years.
I lay in the mud and he held me up against his knee. ‘All right-all right now, Stacey.’
I clutched at the front of his expensive sheepskin coat. ‘Hoffer, Marco-Hoffer and Burke. They’re mine. You tell Vito that. You tell the capo. This is mine- mine alone. My vendetta! My vendetta!’
I shouted the words out loud and the men of Bellona stood in a silent ring, faces like stone, the Furies in some Greek play awaiting the final bloody outcome with complete acceptance.
The cracks on the ceiling made an interesting pat-tern, rather like a map of Italy if you looked at it long enough, including the heel, but no Sicily.
Sicily, I closed my eyes, a hundred different things crowding into my mind. When I opened them again, Marco was standing by the bed, hands in the pockets of his magnificent sheepskin coat.
‘That’s a beautiful coat,’ I said.
He smiled, the kind of smile I’d known so often as a boy. ‘How do you feel?’
I was wrapped in a heavy grey blanket. When I opened it I found that I was still in my jump suit, that my shoulder had been rebandaged with what looked like strips of white linen torn from a sheet. I pushed hard and found myself on the edge of the bed, feet on the floor.
‘Watch it,’ Marco warned. ‘You’re lucky to be alive.’
‘You’re wrong,’ I replied. ‘Utterly and totally wrong. I’m indestructible. I’m going to live for ever.’
He wasn’t smiling now and when the door opened and Cerda came in quickly, I realised from the expres-sion on his face that I must have shouted.
I saw that the Smith and Wesson was on a small bedside locker, reached for it and held it against my face. The metal was so cold it burned, or that was the sensation. I looked up into their troubled faces and smiled, or thought I did…
‘Where is she?’
‘In my bedroom,’ Cerda replied.
I was on my feet and lurching through the door, pul-ling from Marco’s outstretched hand. Cerda was ahead of me by some strange alchemy, had the door open, and beyond, the dark, sad woman that was his wife turned from the bed in alarm.
The Honourable Joanna lay quite still, her face the colour of wax, another, cleaner bandage than mine around her head.
I turned to Marco. ‘What’s happening?’
‘She’s not good, Stacey. I’ve spoken to the capo on the telephone. The nearest doctor is two hours away by road, but he’s been instructed to come.’
‘She mustn’t die,’ I said. ‘You do understand that?’
‘Sure I do, Stacey.’ He patted my arm. ‘There’s a private ambulance on the way from Palermo, two of the best doctors in Sicily on board. She’ll be all right, I’ve looked at her myself. It’s nasty, but it’s no death wound. You’ve nothing to worry about.’
‘Except Hoffer,’ I said. ‘He thinks she is dead. For him, it’s essential that she is.’ I looked at him and nodded slowly. ‘But then you know about that, don’t you? All about it?’
He didn’t know what to say and tried to smile re-assuringly. ‘Forget Hoffer, Stacey, the capo will deal with him. It’s all arranged.’
‘How long for?’ I demanded. ‘A week-a month? He used me, didn’t he, Marco? He used me like he uses you and everyone else?’ I found that I was still holding the Smith and Wesson in my left hand and pushed it into the holster. ‘Not any longer. I settle with Hoffer personally.’
I turned and looked at the girl. If she was not dead she would be soon, or so I thought at the time. ‘We’ll go now,’ I told Marco. ‘In the Alfa. Meet them on the way.’
He frowned. ‘No, better to wait, Stacey. A rough ride in the car after the rain. The surface will have gone on most of the mountain roads.’